They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But how does it look on a printed page?

It is very important to understand how graphics appear in order to know how a picture is going to behave in your printed book. This article will help you learn about what to expect. Just because a picture looks fantastic on your computer monitor, it doesn’t mean that it is going to look the same way on paper. An eBook is going to look pretty much the same as what you see on your computer’s monitor because a phone, eBook reader, and computer monitor all display graphics with light. This makes everything appear bright and colorful automatically. How this transfers to print is completely different.

Graphics On Monitors

Display Properties: Monitors display graphics in light. There is really no way to know if a picture on your monitor is going to look a certain way in print, because even different monitors will display graphics differently depending on what type they are and what their settings are.

Resolution:Computer graphics are generally low-resolution at 72 ppi (pixels per square inch), but they still can look good and detailed. This is only true for light-emitted devices though. Printed books are a whole different animal.

Colors: The third difference is that they are generally shown in RGB (red, green and blue) colors, and a blend of all three colors creates white on your screen. Light is completely different, in that it seems brighter than it is in reality. When you create an eBook on the computer, it will show graphics exactly the same way in an epub or whatever format you have as an eBook.

Graphics On Paper

Display Properties:Printed graphics are purely ink on white paper. Some ink batches may be slightly different, but vary very little, and generally not enough to notice.

Resolution:In order to print correctly, they must be at a high resolution of at least 300 ppi (similar but not exactly like “dpi” which is dots per square inch for a home or office printer). Because printed graphics are produced with ink instead of light, they are nearly always going to look a bit darker on paper than on your computer monitor. You can do a test and print a picture out on paper, and it will give you a fairly accurate “reading” on how your graphics will show up in your book, however Tovim Press has ways to correct the color and make your work print-ready.

Colors: Ink colors are in CMYK (“cyan” or blue, “magenta” or red, yellow, and “key” or true black), and a blend of the three primary colors will create black. It is important to make sure that black is printed using true black and not a combination, or it can create ink saturation problems. Saturation problems will affect the way the ink behaves on the paper, such as puddling, soaking in and bleeding, etc. We use software that will usually fix these problems so that graphics can pass inspections of the printer’s equipment.

Monitor Color vs. Printed Color

Below is an example of pictures on the monitor compared to a printed book that they appeared in:

As you can see, the monitor always looks brighter and lighter. This is only natural for any and all printed materials. Both of these examples are using standard ink on standard paper. Premium ink and premium paper will likely yield a better picture due to their more expensive properties.

Specifications for Print Books with Graphics

Whether a book is in hardcover or paperback, the cover or the pages, all require the same specifications. For color graphics, they must be 300 ppi for most graphics, but for extremely fine-detailed pen and ink drawings, they must be at 600 ppi. These specifications also apply to any promotional tools that you may order from us such as bookmarks, posters, postcards, or flyers.

Ideally, graphics should be in CMYK, but Tovim Press has the means to change RGB graphics into CMYK. In this case, we cannot guarantee that they will look exactly the same in color, but they should be very close. It is possible that these conversions could look a bit more dull in comparison.

If one has a reference book or general pictures, standard ink on standard 50 lb. paper may work fine for your purpose as above. If you have less detail than photographs, but have many pictures as for children’s books, you may choose standard ink on premium 70 lb. paper, offering a good opacity that is not visible through the page in the slightest. If graphics are a bigger part of your book, you may need more quality for photographs, such as a finer-grade premium ink and premium 70 lb. paper that is thicker and maximum opacity.

Tovim Press can help to make your book print-ready to pass our printer’s rigorous inspections. Check out our various packages to see what we can do for you.

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You are an independent or freelance author and want to publish a book. What is the best way to go about it? There are a few different choices. Let’s take a look at the different options and dispel some myths. We will look at the pros and cons of the three different types of publishers, saving the best for last!

Traditional Publishers

If one has enough money and a famous name, they can try their hand at landing a contract with a Traditional Publishing Company. Most people can’t achieve this route, but these are the pros and cons:

Pros

Traditional Publishers use offset press, which can offer specialized covers and unusual sizes. However, this can get very expensive.

You should get pretty good distribution, and be assured of getting your books into physical “brick and mortar” bookstores.

A really good Traditional Publisher will do all of the marketing and promotion for the author. This is why they often charge money up front, as it helps to defray their cost.

Some Traditional Publishers may pay an advance if you are famous enough and they really want your work. This helps promote the illusion of prestige.

Cons

Getting a contract with a Traditional Publisher is usually somewhat unrealistic for most authors. Another sad truth is that unless you are a best-selling author with a huge hit, you will not generally be able to make a living by writing books. Most authors are in it for the love of writing. If you are only in it to make money alone, you may just consider the category of Self-Publishing.

If you are an unknown, Traditional Publishers don’t know if you will be a profitable venture for them, so if they do happen to accept you they will often ask for a sizable amount of money upfront in order to decrease their risk.

If a Traditional Publisher does consider your work, it may take anywhere from several months to a year before they get back with you, or to even find out if they have accepted or rejected your work, and it is tied up for this amount of time.

Traditional Publisher generally use off-set printing presses. This means they do a run of a certain number of books. This means there is a limited number of books that are printed, and once this run is over, that’s it. No more books until another edition is deemed necessary years later if at all!

Once the book run is over, the Traditional Publisher may opt for your book to go out of print, meaning it is never available again.

Traditional Publishers usually have an exclusive contract that cannot be broken or altered. If you are unhappy with them for some reason, you can’t do anything about it. You may be obligated to only publish with them, or worse yet, they could have a clause stating that they own your work if you publish with them.

Since you have a set number of copies printed, you may be required to buy a certain number of them, and then you have to store them. You may wind up with a garage full of books that you cannot sell.

A bad Traditional Publisher does little or no promotion for their authors and their books. This means they take in the money but don’t invest in their authors. A book is only as successful as it is well-known.

Self-Publishers

Often, there is a very bad connotation connected with “self-publishing” or “vanity publishing”. This is not always unfounded. Let’s Look at their Pros and Cons:

Pros

This is usually the cheapest way to get a book published.

They may give you a free ISBN, but that ISBN is always going to be tied to a “self-publishing” company.

It is very easy to simply upload your files and voila! You’ve got yourself a book!

If your book has good content, is well-edited and professionally designed, a Traditional Publishing Company could eventually come across your book and offer you a contract. (Although sadly, there are some non-legitimate companies that prey on self-published authors promising a contract but offering to publish one book for a huge amount of money.)

You may get a fairly nice royalty per book, but this only really adds up if many people know to buy your book.

Cons

Self-publishing companies may or may not have quality control, and are certainly not known for discretion as to what they print. This helps give “self-publishing” a bad reputation. Books may be badly formatted (if formatted at all), shoddily manufactured, poorly written, or be among the “genre” of books that consist of get-rich-quick schemes advertising for one to purchase more books to achieve the goal.

If you are unfamiliar with the printing business and the specifications needed to have high-quality, print-ready files up to the book industry’s specifications, your book can turn out to look like it was published by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. The pictures and cover may be fuzzy, the text may not be aligned properly, the formatting could be all wrong. There are a dozen reasons why there are professional publishing companies and it shows.

There may be little or no quality control or no editing and proofreading involved, which is what gives “self-publishing” a bad name.

Usually self-publishing companies that offer packages have a limit to the number of picture insertions allowed in a book.

Most self-publishing companies force you to order a certain number of books, and have a minimum or maximum number per order.

You may be forced into an exclusive one-year contract that cannot be broken if you do not like their results.

The sad fact is that when one “self-publishes”, they are often taking the quick and cheap way out, ultimately selling themselves short. Any loony off the street can create a book with who-knows-what kind of content and it will be “published” by these companies.

You may own the rights to your work, but the self-publishing company and its affiliates are able to control how they can use it. This can be extremely problematic if you ever come out with a newer edition of your book. They can even keep your new version from being seen in sale listings, in favor of promoting their own company’s older version. You will likely get the runaround when trying to prevent this from happening. They may claim “they can’t remove the old title” because there are sellers with used copies, or they still have some of the book in stock. This can ultimately force you to buy your own book at the retail price just in order to have the old version removed!

You may not get the respect you deserve by self-publishing, no matter how good you are. You simply may not be taken seriously as an author.

You may or may not get very wide distribution.

It is entirely up to you to market your book. You may actually get a listing on one or two book websites, but there might not be any real potential for getting your book into an actual “brick and mortar” bookstore.

Examples of a self-published book (left) versus a book published by Tovim Press (right) shown side by side. The self-published book on the left has a fuzzy cover image. The book on the right was published by Tovim Press. The cover image is crystal clear and sharp, and the laminated paperboard is thicker.

Independent and Hybrid Publishers

Enter Tovim Press. We are an Independent Publisher of Print-On-Demand (POD) books, sometimes loosely referred to as a “Hybrid” Publisher. We offer the best of all worlds. Let’s look at the Pros and Cons:

Pros

First and foremost is quality! Not only do we make paperback and ebooks, but specialize in durable and beautiful hardcover books that last a lifetime.

We are a full-service publisher that offers most anything an author could need at affordable prices with the greatest possible value.

You are in complete control of your work and always own all rights to it. Our non-exclusive contract can be broken if need be at any time (in writing), or you can stay with us.

Since we offer Print-On-Demand books, your title never goes out of print, unless you want it to!

You still make royalties on any books that are sold (excluding ones you buy at cost– see below).

We offer promotional materials to go along with your book to help you market it. We can provide you with all the tools you need to promote your book and get it noticed, from physical marketing materials like posters and bookmarks, to professional custom websites, sell sheets, and book reviews.

We professionally design and lay out your book to meet the printing specifications and publishing industry standards, and create beautiful covers for your book (with your input and/or your own design).

We can provide book distribution to over 40,000 libraries, online booksellers, and bookstores (including “brick and mortar”), across the globe.

Tovim Press is a registered publisher with the Library of Congress and Bowker, the company that issues ISBNs and supplies data to the global “Books In Print” catalog.

Our ISBNs are known to be registered to an actual Independent Publisher, not just a “Self-Publisher”.

Since we are independent, we have the freedom to accept any authors, not just a select few– as long as their work complies with Our Terms of Use Policy.

We do not force our authors to buy a certain amount of books in order to start publishing with us. That means no garage full of books, and no huge investment up front.

Each author that publishes with us gets their own free Author Page that features all of their books.

Our authors can buy their own books at cost (not including shipping and handling), without any minimum or maximum number of books to be ordered.

There is no limit to the number of picture insertions allowed in your book. If your book has more pictures than the maximum amount listed in a Bundle or service, for a small fee, more pictures can be added. (This is because picture insertions go through a special process to assure that the proper resolution, ink saturation values and other technical digital printing specifications are met.)

Cons

Authors must do all of their own marketing and book promotion, but we do offer products and services to help. This is how we are able to keep our prices for products and services lower than most Independent and Hybrid Publishers.

You must pay for a Tovim Press ISBN, but we do offer them for a discounted price.

What Can Tovim Press Do for You?

Providing that your book meets our publishing guidelines, we accept all New Independent Jewish Authors (NInJAs) and as long as your book is well-written, will not turn anyone away. For those Do-It-Myself Jewish Authors (DIMJAs) who do know the special requirements of the printing industry, we offer A La Carte services so that you can get only the services and products you need. For most authors, we have quality services with various bundles that offer an incredible value depending on your needs and budget.

When you sign up with Tovim Press, we have you sign a contract and W-9, because you are paid royalties on your books sold through retailers. We cannot promise that your book will be a best-seller, but we can promise you that you will get the highest quality books, and services for a reasonable price as possible. Our reputation depends on it!

Tovim Press Tools and Templates

Here is an overview of all of the different tools and resources available for our authors. Once your manuscript is finished, you can get a head-start on making your book ready for the printing process. Tovim Press offers many tools to help you, and probably more free items than any other publisher.

Check over our store to see what you need. You can buy as little as you need or as much as you like. All of our prices are up-front with no hidden charges. You can do it all yourself, or have us do it for you. When all elements are put together you can truly have a book to be proud of! We also offer you marketing tools to help you promote your book.

Templates

For those who publish with us, we have free templates that are pre-formatted to our specifications. They have nicely spaced margins for a comfortable grip and we prefer to have you use easy-to-read font for the main body text, for extended reading. We make the highest quality books possible for the most enjoyable experience for the reader.

Once you know what size book you want, you can download one of our template sets. These Pre-Formatted Templates contain everything you need, including our logo. There are three in each set, one for the front, middle and back, since each element is different. These can only be used if you are publishing with Tovim Press, since they contain material that is under trademark and copyright. They come with Read Me files, and are available for books with or without bleed.

Tools

Word Count Tool: Once you have finished your manuscript, but it is still in a rough draft form, you can see what the word count is by selecting the whole book’s text and putting it into the Word Count Tool. From there it can be further calculated into pages with the next tool.

Word-To-Pages Estimator: If you have finished your manuscript, but don’t know how long it is, we have an exclusive tool to help you figure it out. Find the total number of words in your word processing program and go to the Words-to-Pages Estimator. It will give you a rough estimate as to how many pages your book will be according to the book’s final trim size, based on our templates and various font, font size, and line spacing.

Book Cost Calculator: If you want a tool to figure it out for you, there is the Print Book Cost Calculator. This will tell you the exact manufacturing cost of one copy of your book, based on all of the various book options we have available.

Minimum Retail Price Estimator: If you aren’t sure how to price your book, we have another tool which can help you figure out what the minimum retail price should be. Check out the competition for your genre to see what other books are listed for, and that should help you determine a cap for your list price. Go to Minimum List Price Estimator.

Royalty Estimator: If you would like to see what your royalties are, you can figure them out using our Royalty Calculator. Both of these tools are used in conjunction with the Book Cost Calculator to determine your book’s cost to produce. Go to Royalty Estimator.

Book Options Page If you are not sure of how your physical book should be made, see our Book Options page. It tells you the basic guidelines for many book types, such as An Average Children’s Book, a durable 8 x 8 inch gloss hardcover with thick paper for easy handling of small hands. A 6 x 9 inch Trade Paperback or Hardcover with Matte finish, classy for novels or memoirs. A Pocket-size Paperback- great for a handy reference guide. A Landscape 11 x 8.5 in Hardcover or Paperback- beautifully displays high-resolution photographs or art books, fit for the coffee table. On this page is a chart of book options so you can see exactly how much your book will cost.

Fonts

If you need a choice of more fonts, we have free font packs that are legally available for commercial use, one set in English and another set of Hebrew fonts that are available for download. To view samples of them, click on these links: English Font Samples or Hebrew Font Samples.

We show many samples of fonts that are best for interior body text, for the bulk of the book. There are also other specialized fonts that you may want to use for “drop caps” or “raised caps” for the first letter at the beginning of a chapter.

Many can be used for opening chapter pages and for book titles on the title page and the cover of your book. There are many themes to choose from.

Other Interior Design Elements

If you need to separate parts in your book, we also offer free packs of flourishes, bullets and separators. There are also decorative page frames for memorials and ads if you need to raise funds for your book. Have people in your community purchase spots in the back of your book for dedications, and place their text within the borders of the frame. All of these can be viewed on the Decorative Additions page.

Book Layout

This shows general samples of interior design, and where certain key pages of books are supposed to be placed. Yes, there are certain rules to this, and the “Laying Out Your Book” page should help.

Other Resources

For all other elements concerning writing a book and/or illustrations, our Vital Resources Page has an incredible variety of online links you can use. From several types of thesauri to commercially available royalty-free graphics, if you can’t find what you need, it likely doesn’t exist!

Create Your Account

Tovim Press is happy to help you create a beautiful, high-quality book at a reasonable cost.